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Yes it is a good idea no matter what your recipe calls forI took a French cooking class once and she recommended it for dishes which are prepared in a Dutch oven, which I really love also, so I use a browned meat in crock pot also. I also saute a few sweet onions in the pot before I add themeat.......I love onions and garlic, but realize they are not suited for every recipe, but it sure adds some loveliness to the dish.

YES for flavor. I find raw meat that has been thrown into a crockpot lacking in flavor. Of course onions always add some zest to it as well as some herbs........

Yes the French cooking class was just great. I took it through Adult Extension. There were 12 in our class and there were six stoves so we all got to cook as teams. The finale was we ate what we cooked which was to die for. The class was 8 weeks and each class lasted from 9 to 2PM.....There was ONE man in our class. He was going to be second cook on a yacht (family of six) which was leaving San Diego heading south to tip of SoAmerica where it would then head north along the east coast of SoAmerica and return through the Panama Canal to San Diego. The only glitch was he had no French training so this was his introduction. He was 23 years old.Can you imagine what an experience that would be???

You'd think that, but if you browned meat in a pan (and I often use ground turkey in place of ground beef in dishes, like sloppy joes and Hamburger Helper) you do still get a noticeable quantity of fat in the pan - I believe the fat content is by weight, so you can have a sizable volume of fat in comparison to the meat. But try it both ways!

I've done both; the meat is always cooked (up to 12h on "low" which with my crock is enough to keep stuff simmering for hours; if anything, food gets overcooked) but if you brown it first it tastes a lot better.

Safety wise you are fine, and depending on the dish I never bothered if it was poultry. I have found I do like either browning, or in terms of making stock I roast bones and veggies, first because it adds much more flavor.

That being said I have a bunch of bones & veggies to roast so I can make beef stock today, perfect weather for it :)

I have NEVER browned meat first. That said, I avoid recipes that specifically say you must brown it first. I use the crockpot because it is so fast & easy. Extra steps are for when you have time to cook. :) But I've never had lack of flavor issues either. Pot roasts come out beautifully for me without browning. For recipes that call for already cooked ground beef, I use vegetarian "beef" crumbles which come ready to toss in. In a crockpot dish you can't even tell it's not beef.

If it's a barrier to you cooking your own food, i.e. one more thing to do, just throw it in. With ground meats, they will cook up in bigger chunks, or in very small bits if there is a lot of liquid. Meat with a little less flavor due to browning is still much better for you than a restaurant meal or highly processed food that you make because you "didn't have the time to brown the meat."

If it's a meat like a roast that you are going to slice or shred, I don't bother. Long, slow cooking does a lot of good things for flavor.

So, it's nice to do if you want to, but it's not a safety issue. Also recipes that depend on browning for flavor aren't going to be great in a crockpot. Imperfect food is still delicious!

i have never put ground meat in the crock raw, mostly b/c i've never really thought of it, but now that i DO think about it, i don't think i'd want all the fat floating around in there.

what i do is buy ground beef in bulk and cook it and freeze it in 1/2 lb packages as soon as i buy it. then, when i am preparing meals, all i have to do is let it thaw enough (takes about 15 minutes in a sinkful of hot water) to throw into the crockpot or the dish i'm cooking. so i spend about an hour and a half once a month to pre-brown 6 to 8 lbs of ground meat, and then food prep is quick and easy the rest of the month. ;)

Browning the meat makes it even more delicious, but I tend to only do it with ground beef/turkey/chicken/pork. As far as whole hunks of meat, like a chicken breast or porkchops, I don't bother.

What you could do is brown meat ahead of time, then freeze it. I've done this before, and you can just defrost this and plop it in there. I have 3/4# unfrozen ground turkey that's waiting to meet its new friend Hamburger Helper :)

a) it's much less fatty if you brown it firstb) if it's ground up, it has less bacteria if you cook it first (I know you said bacteria is not an issue, but I can't think of a way that it isn't when you're dealing with ground meats - I'm just not comfortable if it hasn't been cooked first - maybe I'm paranoid.)c) it tastes better

Specifically with ground turkey, I'd be doing it because of b) because I'm extra paranoid about birds and fish. (I'm also one of those crazy people that doesn't cook stuffing inside their turkey - but I have more than the bacteria reasons - if you put it inside, there is never enough.)

That being said, I almost never use ground meats in a slowcooker because of my "it must be cooked first" rule.

Unless you are easily made sick like me, you probably won't die by not browning, but it will likely taste better if you do.

Bacteria could never survive hours in a crockpot that's ACTIVELY cooking.

More reason to be paranoid about stuffing: it's awfully hard to get the center of the stuffing up to temperature. One suggestion: preheat the stuffing in the microwave, THEN stuff it in the bird. Also, make some loose stuffing in a dish, then combine it with the stuffing that comes OUT of the bird, that way it all gets the benefit of the juices from the bird.

I pull out some of the juices from under the bird while it's cooking (I flip my bird halfway through) and add it to the stuffing since the stuffing takes less time to bake than the bird. That way I get bird-juices in my stuffing without having to cook it in the bird.

Depends on the meat and your time. Fatty meats like beef, pork, and sausage should be browned to render out some of the fat. Other meats CAN be browned, which adds a TREMENDOUS amount of flavor, but isn't STRICTLY necessary.

You don't have to brown the meat first, for some dishes its a good idea for others not so much. I make a great beef stroganoff in my slow cooker with stew meat and I never browned the meat first turns out really dammed good every time!

Though if i were making chili, if time allowed I would definatly brown the meat first!